Remembering Dutch-Moluccan radicalism: Memory politics and historical event television

Abstract

This article examines memory politics in relation to radical actions of young Dutch-Moluccans, more specifically a train hijacking in 1977 at the village of De Punt in the Netherlands. The article examines how these historical events were remembered in the drama-documentary television film, De Punt, as well as in user-generated comments in an online discussion. The television film represented an inclusive memory culture that made room for the difficult memories of all parties involved, including the radicalised, young hijackers. Based on a multidimensional model of mass media reception, the analysis of the web debate examines how viewers reacted to this interpretation. The web debate functioned as a participatory forum, where collective and national memories and postcolonial history were intensely discussed, and the debate made room for some degree of reconciliation between viewers of Dutch-Moluccan and of Dutch majority background.